


An Unkindness

by Alex_deMorra (Ergo_Sum)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-10 09:48:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15946844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ergo_Sum/pseuds/Alex_deMorra
Summary: Nathan Burgoine's ongoing flash fiction challenge continues here ( https://apostrophen.wordpress.com/2018/09/03/september-flash-fiction-draw/ ) with:SuspenseA Bag of MoneyA Border Crossing...all in 1 thousand words or less.Here's my contribution...





	An Unkindness

“A group of crows is a murder, a group of vultures is a wake, but a group of ravens? Well, that is merely an unkindness. Doesn’t seem right, does it?”

His father had disappeared again. Into that space between this world and the next, that space that allowed one to overhear, to trespass, but not truly take part in. This wasn’t going to be a conversation.

Wilhelm sighed and tried anyway. “Papa?”

The old man slunk into his flannel, wrinkles etched deeper into themselves as he threw his gaze across the porch into the canyon of the Rio Grande where a group of birds hovered, slowing from their recent frenetic rise. Their beaks pointed to something below. Something of interest.

Damn.

“Papa, blow on this if something comes close,” Wilhelm said, wrapping his father’s fingers around a silvered bear whistle. Then he retreating back into the house for a rifle. The closest was also the newest, broken in by tin cans and rattlers. It was the same that got him the straightest shot from furthest away and that was a thing that could be life or death out here. Though if he was confronted by anything more than anyone something, death would be preferable.

The door thudded behind him. It was a duller sound than the crunch of gravel or of the crack of dried clay breaking under his boot. Duller than the shift of rabbits underbrush. Duller than the whimper of the man crawling on his elbows, curling round his bag the moment he saw another human.

“Ain’t gonna hurt you.”

Wilhelm said it in a tone that indicated he might provide a hand up but ended up staying put. Between the two of them, there were 3 guns and belts of ammunition. Wilhelm’s own was a breakaway with a single 20 gauge in the chamber. He wouldn’t risk spooking the man.

Still, that trail of blood he’d been dragging wouldn’t keep anyone following him away, spooked or not. Guns or not.

“Someone following you?”

Wilhelm’s question was answered by a strained wheeze.

Finally, the stranger raised his head enough for the sun to strike light onto a white man’s face whose left side was painted red, chin covered with an image of an open black hand. The red paint was not the same color red tangling through the loose braid trapped under the man’s cheek.

“Okay,” Wilhelm mouthed slowly, quietly, taking care to keep any inflection or wobble from coming into his words, “I’m gonna rephrase that. _Who_ is following you?”

Settlement into this area had always been dangerous. Too dangerous for his mother, whose corpse they found outside of the burnt-out remains of a different house. A grander one. One who, in hindsight, might have advertised too blatantly to be housing something of value. Theirs now was merely a nook and it was well hidden but not so well hidden as to protect from a party seeking prey. 

“If I were smart, I’d take you up over the cliff and throw you over.” The man’s nostrils flared and Wilhelm one hand up in surrender. “I said _if I was smart_. Clearly, I am no such thing. How far are they behind you? A day? Hours? Do I have time to cover your trail?”

The shake of his head was barely visible. Or was it a shrug? Wilhelm had nothing on him. Nothing to gather the clumps of blood that could be redirected along another path in another direction. Nothing but local brush to sweep away…well, there weren’t even footsteps, were there? Just a sweep of dust the width of a man for as far as he could see.

A crack broke through the clear blue sky above them.

Five horses. Five men. Five heads turned, not into the canyon where Wilhelm crouched with the stranger, but behind them. Five arms at one with bows. Wilhelm imagined he saw the reach for arrows, repeated over and over but, really, it was all a blur.

The gunfire continued.

One went down. Collapsed over a horse, no clue to where he’d been hit.

Then another. A momentary bloom of color at the center of his back before he disappeared.

A third, head flung back before he tumbled over the cliff edge without his horse.

Wilhelm reached under the arms of the man, dragging him and the bag under cover of a large boulder. Explosions continued. Fifty times? A hundred?

Then, silence. The air was dizzy with it.

“C’mon,” Wilhelm rolled onto his back. They’d go back to the house, he was thinking. If they were lucky, whoever shot those five men on the cliff got their own. If they were lucky, that was the end of it. He and his father would have to move again, of course. Once a party got this close, others would smell it. They didn’t have anything to lose save their peace and, Wilhelm knew, even that was almost gone.

Still.

There was stew on the fire.

There wasn’t much to pack.

It was hardly worth the effort, dragging a branch of brush behind him. A good tracker would be able to see footprints. One set clear, one set dragging until fifty yards from a porch where the latter planted firm and, all of a sudden, steady.

Another crack broke open the air. Closer this time. No, not closer—right here.

Wilhelm looked to the stranger, surprised, ears ringing, and looked back to his house where a gunslinger draped forward over his porch railing. Next to him, and an old man, eyes clouded, silver hanging from his mouth, and a bib of red starting from the middle of his neck spreading down through flannel.

A bird circled overhead. Another flew, landing on a branch next to the house. Now he could see it. The red face. The brown feathers. His father got it wrong. What he’d seen, perhaps the last thing he had seen, wasn’t an unkindness after all.


End file.
